William A. Hunton
*William A. Hunton was born on this date in 1865. He was a Black activist, teacher, and administrator.
Hunton was born in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, and was the son of Stanton and Mary A. Johnson Hunton. The Hunton home was an "underground railway station" where John Brown occasionally held conferences on abolitionism. He received his A.M. degree from Wilberforce Collegiate Institute, Canada. He taught in public schools in Canada and was later appointed a clerk in the Department of Indian Affairs under the Canadian Government. In 1888, Hunton was the first negro Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association for work in the United States.
He had been Secretary of the Colored Men's Department International Committee of Y.M.C.A. since 1891. Hunton married Addie Waites in 1893. They had a daughter, Eunice Hunton, and one son, William Hunton Jr. Hunton was a delegate to the World's Y.M.C.A. Jubilee Convention, London, England, 1894; the World's Student Conference, Tokyo, Japan, 1907; attended the Evangelical Conference, Shanghai, China, and made missionary tour in Corea, 1907; was a delegate to the World's Christian Student Conference, Mohonk Lake, N.Y. 1912, and wrote several pamphlets relative to negroes in Y.M.C.A. work.
He was a Methodist member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Southern Sociological Congress, and the Sigma Pi Phi (New York Chapter) Club. He was one of the Best-Known Negro 19th-century Y.M.C.A. Officials In the World. William Alphaeus Hunton died at his home, 575 Green Avenue, on November 30, 1916, in Brooklyn, NY, after an illness of nearly three years. His wife and two children survive him, Miss Eunice and William Alphaeus, Jr.
